Tag Archives: Democratic Party

Libertarians versus National Isolation

English: A peace march through Balboa Park, Sa...
English: A peace march through Balboa Park, San Diego, California, 2003 to protest the Iraq War seven days before it began. Photograph by Patty Mooney, Crystal Pyramid Productions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On April 1, Fox Business Network’s John Stossel hosted a debate featuring three candidates — Gary Johnson, John McAfee and Austin Petersen — for the Libertarian Party’s 2016 presidential nomination (a fourth, more radical libertarian, Darryl W. Perry was unfortunately excluded). Those seeking an alternative to America’s failed political system, in which one party masquerades as two and the range of respectable political opinion covers perhaps five degrees of a 360-degree circle, might do well to consider voting Libertarian this November.

One common accusation leveled against libertarians — those affiliated with the Libertarian Party and those who hang with other parties or eschew political activity altogether — is that we’re “isolationists” because we oppose US intervention in foreign conflicts.

The standard libertarian retort to that criticism is that we support, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “friendship and commerce with all nations, entangling alliances with none,” where real isolationists have historically opposed not just foreign wars but foreign commerce, calling for protectionist trade and immigration policies (which libertarians oppose) to “protect American jobs.”

All three candidates had good responses to foreign policy questions, but I was particularly intrigued by John McAfee’s take on the “i-word.”

“I think isolationism,” McAfee says, “is taking on the role of world policeman, making us a separate entity from the rest of the world. We’re the policemen and you guys are the people that we police. … Dropping bombs on families where mothers and fathers are killed, or brothers and sisters. I would be angry too. You would be angry too. So it is not isolationism to say that we need to bring our troops home, or that we need to stop interfering in the affairs of foreign nations. It is reality and practicality.”

Kind of refreshing, isn’t it? After 25 years of continuous war in the Middle East, the “major” parties continue to mainly offer up candidates who supported the US invasion of Iraq (Hillary Clinton), who want to know if sand glows in the dark (Ted Cruz), or who admit the Iraq war was a mistake but don’t seem to have learned anything from that mistake (Donald Trump).

Those candidates, with their Caligula-style approach to foreign policy — “let them hate us so long as they fear us” — are the real isolationists.

Libertarians, on the other hand, want to make America once again a peaceful member of the community of nations — a leader rather than a menace. Let’s take them up on it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Election 2016: Hillary Clinton is a Bad Hand in the World Series of Political Poker

Hillary Clinton in Hampton, NH
Hillary Clinton in Hampton, NH (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I see a firefighter or EMT in uniform out and about in town, I think little of it. Maybe she’s on her way to or from work. Maybe he’s doing a routine fire safety inspection for a local business. Whatever, no biggie. On the other hand, when I pull to the side of the road to let eight or ten emergency vehicles pass me with their sirens wailing, and hear other sirens in the distance converging on a specific point, I assume there’s some kind of calamity in the offing.

The Washington Post reports that “[o]ne hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads” in the matter of Hillary Clinton’s homebrew email server. The aide who maintained that server, Bryan Pagliano, receive immunity in return for his cooperation in the probe. According to the Los Angeles Times, the FBI plans to interview other Clinton aides — and Clinton herself — in the near future.

That’s quite a few sirens and klaxons. It’s getting harder and harder to make out Clinton’s “this is nothing” and “this is just a routine security review” and “this is just a Republican fishing expedition”  and “bad judgment but no crime” explanations over the din.

I hold no brief for the Democratic Party in general, or for Hillary Clinton in particular, or for the Republicans. I’m a partisan Libertarian and a pox on both their houses. But I tremble at the prospect of one party exercising absolute control over both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government — especially with Donald Trump or Ted Cruz at its head.

Those are the stakes in this year’s game of presidential poker. Do Democrats really want to go all in on Hillary Clinton’s narcissistic sense of self-entitlement, especially when it’s looking more and more likely that the next card the dealer turns up will be grand jury indictments?

Apparently they do, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. It’s politically just completely nuts. Even if Clinton herself escapes prosecution, it’s worth remembering that Richard Nixon was never indicted either, but was forced to resign after several of his closest aides were.

After such a gloomy forecast, I suppose the next step is following up with some brilliant advice. But I have none to offer. Absent an unexpected surge in the Libertarian vote, the forecast changes to four years of stormy  and capricious weather.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Election 2016: The X-Files/Napoleon Dynamite Factor

RGBStock.com Vote Pencil

As we come around what may be the final curve of the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton look positioned to be the two horses who break free of the pack and make a neck-and-neck run down the final straightaway toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That pairing and the likely outcome tell us some interesting things about America’s voters and their chosen candidates.

Specifically, it tells us that many voters are the political equivalents of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from Fox’s long-time fan favorite show The X-Files: They want to believe.

Believe in what? Well, that varies.

Trump’s supporters want to believe that, working with him, they can “make America great again.” Nobody seems to really know how that might come about, except that it will involve getting Mexico to pay for a wall. But not to worry: It will be yuuuuge. It will be very nice. They’ll like it a lot, winning so much that they get bored with winning. They want so intensely to believe this that, as Trump himself says, he “could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” They don’t care whether or not he’s a “conservative” or about his actual policy positions. They don’t even demand that he make any sense from day to day.

Clinton’s supporters want to believe not only that she can win, but that she’s the only Democrat who can. They want so intensely to believe this that they’re willing to ignore her mediocre past electoral record, her dismal performances in elected and appointed office, her yuuuuge (like Trump’s) public disapproval numbers, the significant chance that she’ll be indicted over her mishandling of classified information, and the fact that she’s only been a “progressive” for about a minute, because it came to her attention that that’s what people like about Bernie Sanders.

If the voters resemble Mulder and Scully, the candidates remind me of the candidates in Napoleon Dynamite: Summer Wheatley, the “popular” student the regular kids actually love to hate but apathetically assume will win the student body presidency in a walk, and Pedro Sanchez, the upstart new guy who promises that if his fellow students vote for him “all of your wildest dreams will come true.”

I love The X-Files. I enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite.  But I’m not sure I can take eight more months of watching e-run marathons. Can you?

Maybe it’s time for a crisis of political faith. Maybe it’s time to crank up Netflix and find a new show to follow or a new movie to watch. So, two recommendations:

First, pull up Doug Stanhope’s comedy special Beer Hall Putsch on Netflix.

Second, if you must vote, vote Libertarian.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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